The Old Chartist by Frederick
Sandys. Frontispiece to Poems, Vol. I
(Memorial Edition, Vol. XXIV), but originally accompanying the poem in
the magazine Once a Week, 8 February, 1862.

At the time Meredith was writing the poems in his second volume of
poetry, Modern Love and Poems of the English
Roadside, with Poems and Ballads (1862), where this was
published after his better-known sonnet sequence. He was then living
in Copsham Cottage in Esher, with heathland and woods all around.
Copsham Common in particular seems to have attracted him. "This was a
great resort for gipsies and tinkers, with whom he enjoyed conversing,
thereby acquiring much first-hand knowledge of which he was to make
good use" (Sassoon 43). "The Old Chartist" was one of the poems that
drew on this knowledge, and his own feelings about and hopes for the
brotherhood of man. Keith Hanley writes, "The subject of this poem
appreciates the changed conditions of relative prosperity in
mid-Victorian Britain ... but he still insists on the relevance of his
basic old convictions" (111n.).

Meredith moved in artistic circles during these Esher years: in the
summer of 1862 he even entered into a short-lived agreement with Dante Gabriel Rossetti to become a
sub-tenant of his house in Cheyne Walk,
Chelsea, along with Swinburne and William Rossetti,
for the days he had to spend in London. Sandys was a good
friend, who would later make a delicate pencil and watercolour
portrait of Meredith's second wife, Marie — very different from
this illustration with it bold lines, and of course much more suitable
to its subject and for its purpose.

Image download and text by Jacqueline Banerjee. You may
use the image without prior permission for any scholarly or
educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the source and (2) link
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